Dead Reckoning
by The Shay-Shay
Summary: There's a few things about life that people tend to forget yet they live it every day. It's messy and confusing, a labyrinthine of causes and effects. Most can't tell where they're going, but those who know how to look, they can do so by seeing the landmarks that are within reach. Dead reckoning has its advantages. "Crash" ficlets, vignettes, one-shots, and more.
1. Shame

**Dead Reckoning  
****Shame**

_**Disclaimer**_**: Hahaha—no. I do not, nor will I ever, own any media showcased in this piece of fanfiction. They all belong to their respective creators and owners. The only thing I (barely) own is this piece are the written works and the original characters within it.**

_**Warnings**_**: There will be cursing, violence, mild nudity, blood, gore, and a few other minor things under the rainbow with this fic.**

_**Notes**_**: Hi, my name is Shay-Shay and I don't know how to stop myself. I think I need to be stopped. Pffft. Ahem. Moving on.**

**In the spirit of **_**Left Behind**_** and its counterpart drabble series, **_**Dying Light**_**, I've decided to do the same for **_**Crash**_**: make a series of drabbles. Now, for **_**Crash**_**, it's a bigger story. **_**Left Behind**_** is just one aspect of the **_**Crash**_** 'Verse. In fact, it's actually a small slice of background nuances than anything, and everything in **_**Dying Light**_** is even smaller to reflect smaller moments in time. **_**Dead Reckoning**_** is similar in that respect, but with a wider and broader cast to select from and write drabbles for. **

**Because really? I won't have the time to show every scene or moment in time with secondary or tertiary background characters up front and center at all times in **_**Crash**_** if I'm to stick with the main schedule of the plot. Just like in **_**My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic**_** (yes, I'm using that as reference, hush, my lovelies), they normally focus on one or two or all of the Mane Six—but every once in a while, we get glimpses of the secondary characters and how their lives are going, and how in their few minutes of limelight, they're the main character in that moment. **

**That's what **_**Dead Reckoning**_** is going to be. **

**Because you can only see where you're going by knowing where you've been. **

**OoOoOoOoOoO**

"So this device, it can pull up whatever information you desire?"

"Yes. I can also send information or a message or an inquiry, in an instant and pretty much get a response back just as quick. We don't have to write a letter, send it out by bird or dragon or ship or whatever it is you do, and wait for weeks and months to pass before a response is given. It's…complicated."

"Yes, I suppose, but at the same time…it's simple."

Lupin tapped on the keys of her laptop keyboard, staring at the bright screen and the wall of text sitting in the open window. Her expression turned thunderous as she scanned the article she had been reading minutes before.

"I don't believe this."

"What is it?"

She hesitated before scrolling up. At the top, the headline read in bold print, "**Woman Sacrifices Life to Save Others in Deadly Shootout at LAX**". The article went on a very bland description of speculation, how details were still being sorted out, and what investigators were doing to ensure this type of security breach won't happen again. No mentions of her name or who she was, or who even the shooter was were mentioned at all. She doubted it very much anyone would even remember what she looked like, only that she had been some random woman involved in a shooting at an airport. It felt very…apt. Sad, but apt.

The first photograph shown featured a grainy security camera still, with a shadowy figure holding up a gun. Grappling the arm of the figure, trying to wrest away the gun in their hand was herself. Valka leaned in closer, studying the picture. After her initial shock at looking at Lupin's computer, she adapted surprisingly fast.

"Is that you?"

"…yes." She answered reluctantly, sucking in a breath between her teeth. "Technology has obviously advanced, and so much more as well. Weapons are one of them. We have these things called guns, and they can fire off something called a bullet. It's a small projectile that can go faster than an arrow and do just as much, if not more, damage to someone."

Lupin dropped her gaze to her hands, and they strayed to the tattoo on her left hand: a bright four-leafed clover with a bold number thirteen imprinted in the middle. She gathered her next words carefully, grateful that Valka was being so patient.

"It's like I told you before…I was shot in the head. Now, normally I can't die, not like that. Normal bullets made of lead, copper, whatever…they can't do much to me except piss me off when I get back up. But Chimera Dynamics hired this asshole, whoever he was, to use silver bullets to keep me down and out for the count. I just didn't know about it, he must have masked its scent from me somehow. Otherwise, I would've been more careful and quite possible, I wouldn't be here right now."

"And silver can kill you."

"Yes," Lupin said with a resigned nod and a tightness in her chest. "Silver can kill me."

Valka placed a hand on Lupin's shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze. The werewolf glanced over at her, reading the genuine concern written in her eyes. She offered a smile, small and fleeting, but assuring.

"I won't let that happen to you. I give you my word."

Lupin wished she could accept her word, but at the same time, she felt doubt and skepticism rear their ugly heads in the back of her mind. They whispered away poisonous little words of uncertainty and disquiet, making her hesitant to respond in kind. It wasn't that Lupin didn't want to believe Valka and her conviction, far from it.

But one glance at the computer screen and at the photograph still lingering there made her question whether or not it could be a valid feat.

_I thought I was untouchable because I wasn't human and because I was a Marine. Look how easily those assholes at Chimera Dynamics showed me that isn't true. That they could simply reach out and pluck away that confidence I had been strutting around with all these years. _

Despite all the bravado she's put up between herself and the world, her self-assurance was crushed. It was only salt rubbed in the wounds with what Thrax had showcased weeks ago. If she couldn't even keep herself standing up straight, how in the hell could she expect anyone else to help her?

Valka's smile slowly broke away the longer Lupin went without answering and the grip on her shoulder loosened and fell, the ghost of her touch barely even there. Lupin averted her gaze and felt her cheeks burning.

_Coward_.


	2. Slow Down

**Slow Down**

Learning to fly on the backside of a dragon involved falling.

A lot of falling.

It mainly meant learning to not fall, too. It meant learning to read the pilot's actions ahead of time and adjusting to their movements, and in this case, Whiplash was the pilot, not Lupin. She never was. That was another thing she had to learn. It wasn't like driving an MRAP, where she was in full control, where she could go where she wanted—environment permitting—and where she, for the most part, didn't have to give in to the whims of something else besides her own exertion of power.

Learning to read Whiplash had been hard at first.

He may have shown an interest in her at the start, but she had to reach out to him as well. Lupin wasn't the best at doing that sometimes, even under the best of circumstances. She was better at working with machines than she was with people, and while animals usually came in second to that, dragons were an entirely different classification.

Night Furies, she's come to find, were wary creatures. Most dragons were willing to give a rider a chance, so long as they passed the first bonding test. Whiplash was fickle at times. One moment, he was curious about Lupin, the next he wanted nothing to do with her.

It wasn't always fun and games when it came to him. She had to figure out that he indeed liked watching her draw—whether it was the dragons or people or things—but he _especially_ enjoyed any and all sketches she did of him. He did not like it when she quit a piece that he was featured in—and he knew it was him and not one of his flock mates—and decided to toss it or restart. He would steal the pages from her fingertips and hoard it away. Incomplete or not, it was him. What a vain dragon, she always thought when he got so _prissy_ about it.

"I can make a better one," she'd try to tell him, but Whiplash didn't listen to her pleas. She still didn't know where he stuffed his sketchy little treasures.

Or perhaps maybe it wasn't all that great when he got into everything. He was curious and intelligent, and she could respect it—but that didn't mean she appreciated it at times. She had to fight at times to get him to wear a riding saddle, and he'd found ways to let it slip off—sometimes even in mid-flight. He was a clever little cog. Or so he liked to think himself, when he preened himself afterwards.

He was, at the very least, considerate enough to have it happen over the ocean, where he'd scoop Lupin up from the drink, soaked and cursing up a storm, but relatively unharmed. Except for maybe her pride.

Valka didn't worry as much after the first few times, and instead now laughed alongside Whiplash whenever that happened.

But flying was something else compared to all those headaches. On the days when Whiplash didn't feel like being a little prankster, it was so freeing. It was _exhilarating_, it was a rush like no other she's ever experienced. Driving at high speeds along the 405 back home in California, rushing through the San Fernando Valley and into the mountains that led through to Los Angeles proper couldn't compare, not even with all the NOS in the world.

When he hit high speeds, it was like her heart and lungs were freezing, her stomach dropped away in such a way that it didn't make her feel squeamish, and in just those moments…in those moments it was like there was nothing else but them. No Chimera Dynamics, no fucked-up memories, no pain, no Valka, no Berk, no life to get back to. It was just the two of them and nothing could stop them.

She never wanted to slow down. She just wanted to keep going, never stop, not for anyone, or anything. In those moments, she suspected, neither did Whiplash.


	3. Tears

**Tears**

It was difficult finding time to herself for more than a few minutes at a time now that people were coming and going and sticking around. More specifically, they were sticking around her place, alternating between here, Castle Wyvern, and the village of Berk. They were gathering supplies that weren't available or were running out in Castle Wyvern or her place.

This was the first afternoon in the last few weeks she had to herself, really to herself, to do what she wanted.

She didn't want to sleep. Sleeping meant nightmares. Nightmares she didn't want to relive, to remember, to have anything to do with.

The footlockers filled with her personal effects had yet to be touched. She wasn't even sure what was in all of them. Perhaps old military memorabilia. Perhaps items from her childhood, things she had put into storage before joining the Marine Corps.

She was afraid to look.

She'd been holding off for nearly six months in asking for her things, holding off on looking ever since this place had been built and her things had been returned to her. It was something she was hoping she could ignore, pretend it didn't exist, hope it went away—but she knew that wasn't going to happen.

She was going to have to face it sooner or later.

That's where she found herself on this open, interference-and-people-and-dragon-free afternoon: up in the bedroom she's since claimed for her own, alone, staring at the seven footlockers on her floor. They were labeled by number. She decided to open the fourth one, at random, undoing the locks and flipping the lid slowly, trying to ignore the slight shake in her hands as she did.

She could already smell the old scent of carbon and gunfire, even before she lifted the lid. Her old uniforms, still gritty and dusted over, having not been washed since her deployment, greeted her. There were faint tears here and there, as well as the worn out and faded bits to behold. Sergeant chevrons were pinned to the collars, right where they belonged—a quarter of an inch from the corners. She saw roughly torn patches that had been hastily repaired in the field on one set of trousers as she went through the clothing articles; stitched up bullet holes, if she recalled correctly. Beneath her cammies, there were plenty of skivvy shorts and shirts alike, all of them a faded olive green, all of them imbued with the scent of blood, sweat, carbon and gunfire smoke, and even the faded scent of salty tears.

She pushed everything back inside, closed the lid, but didn't lock it. Not yet.

She moved onto the third footlocker. There were personal items in this one, mostly from her deployment. Durable water bottles; a coffee thermos with an amusing tagline ("_Coffee First, Talk Later_"); an iPod and its USB charger cord; a solar-powered USB-port charging station; an old MacBook laptop (it's honestly seen better days, was probably deader than a doorknob, the charger was missing, and had its hard drive already wiped clean and if it hadn't been she'd be thoroughly surprised); a portable hot spot for wifi connection (if it could be achieved wherever she was); a phone charger but not phone; a bundle of letters she and James had exchanged, their envelopes grubby and stained but their contents cherished; a few worn out but well cared for paperback novels…

Small items she could fit into her pack up front in the vehicle she drove—whichever one it might be for the day, that was. They had always been on the move, always driving between bases, pushing further into enemy territory. There was only so much somebody's frayed nerves could handle while dealing with the real world. Small things could go a long way in helping alleviate that.

Lupin drifted between the other footlockers. One had a larger collection of nothing but books and she felt her throat pinch shut at that. They had been taken from hers and James's apartment. It wasn't everything. There was sure to be a whole storage unit with all their things somewhere. Or perhaps not. But these were some of her things, all right.

She could smell her own scent mark on these things…and James's intermingled with it all as well. She was prepared to shove the entire footlocker away from her, as though that alone could make it stop. She froze, however, when she noticed one of the books had something sticking out of it. It looked like an impromptu bookmark at first glance.

Lupin reached for it, plucking the corner edge of the makeshift bookmark and pulling it out. She nearly dropped it when she saw what it really was.

A photograph of her and James.

He was handsome, as always, with his skin the colour of rich umber, a beautiful smile that just kept going, and eyes that were a deep, pleasing brass that seemed to just see straight through bullshit in an instant, and his dreadlocks were always immaculately worn, clean, and professionally worn, except when they were alone together. There was a warmth to him, an easiness that had taken her forever to feel comfortable around. She was stubborn and bullheaded, she recognized that now. He had the patience of a damned saint. She had always thought he wanted her as nothing more than a notch in his belt because of her pigheadedness. Some people, after all, thought of rejection from another person as a challenge to overcome and conquer. He never treated her as such. Not once.

He was polite and courteous, with a wild streak that he rarely showed when he worked alongside everyone. James had been the life of the party—which was a rare feat to accomplish when he had only been a civilian contractor amongst a slew of Marines. Yet, somehow, he had managed it.

She had seen it after she had let her suspicions regarding his intentions and her misguided blind prejudice drop and started to let him in more. Her curiousity grew into a kind of respect, and that soon evolved into affection. Her affection grew into love over time. He had been the one she could talk to, about anything.

Even about her lycanthropic nature. Even about her mutant abilities.

Not once did he threaten to rat her out after she told him. Not once did he try to use that as leverage against her to get something he wanted out of her. It made her respect him all the more for it.

He had treated her trust like a sacred thing, and she did the same, whenever he told her something she felt wasn't something he'd share with the rest of the world. He was someone she wanted to trust and love, after so many years of being guarded, even amongst her own friends, her own family.

There had been something more than just a bond between them.

Now all she had was a ragged hole where he used to be. He was gone. Dead.

He was fucking _dead_.

The man she loved, the man she would have killed for, died for, was fucking dead. It wasn't _fair_. He had been a kind, sweet man. A loving man. Someone she would have been proud to call her husband, her partner in crime, her best friend. He was the one who somehow managed to keep her grounded, balanced.

Now he was nothing but a memory and a few photographs left in this world.

She couldn't have stopped the tears even if she wanted. They came in a flood while her breathes came in pained sips. Her vision blurred away and she screwed her eyes shut, doubling over as she tried, tried so hard, to not make a sound.

A part of her wanted to burn everything. To forget. To hope that the pain would numb itself away if she pretended none of it ever happened.

It hurt worse to try when she could already feel the ghost of his breath on her neck, the evanescent feel of his fingertips trailing across her skin, the warmth of his body against hers. She could just barely hear the sound of his sincere laugh, if she strained herself just enough, like he was really there. It hurt worse trying to will herself to forget all the sweet nothings they had whispered to one another when they had spent what little time they had together. It hurt trying to make herself forget that there had once been someone who made her feel normal, feel _human_—someone who didn't and wouldn't ever treat her like the freak she knew she was.

It wasn't fair. If anyone deserved to live, it was _him_.

James wasn't the one with blood on his hands. He wasn't the one who had signed away his life for a war, went overseas and shot people up full of holes until they didn't get up again. He deserved to live. He was someone who had something to live for, even if it was something as simple as music and life itself, they deserved to be walking around more than she ever would. Her? She was just some dumb mechanic who had somehow managed to stumble this far in life.

She knew that if there was a way, she would have traded places with him in a heartbeat, without hesitation.


	4. Twilight

**Twilight**

The South was a strange place with strange energy and strange people. Lupin wasn't one to linger in one place for longer than necessary. In all honesty…it wasn't the people that bothered her all that much. Sure, they were a bit…hick-ish in her mind, but they were generally polite to her—or as polite as she approximated them to be. Their slang and euphemisms were a bit of double-edged, but that didn't bother her as much, no.

Sometimes it was the way they spoke of certain things, when they thought she wasn't listening or paying them any mind.

The hushed ways they spoke of the things in the woods.

The lights over the cornfields.

The ghosts in the distance that disappeared when you look at them too hard.

The voices that whispered in the quietness of the late-night hours or perhaps even when its right in your ear.

The way they scolded their children to avoid going to certain places at certain hours, and to not look outside when they think they hear coyotes or wild dogs baying in the dark of night, or to not go wandering outside alone after a certain hour.

Of seeing things that weren't really there, like demolished buildings long since gone, or people that evaporate into thin air.

Of hearing things like your mother calling you from somewhere in the house when she isn't even home or the sounds of something scratching at the floorboards, of someone walking up and down the creaky stairs but when you go to look, there's no one and nothing there.

Of taking a photo, and later seeing something that shouldn't be there—like a hand on a shoulder, or a transparent child standing in the background, of glowing eyes or a vague human shape beside you—especially when you were alone in the picture.

Of feeling the temperature drop so rapidly, even in the middle of a summer heat wave, of someone breathing in your ear when there isn't anyone there and it makes you want to quicken your pace just to get home, where it's safe, but only just.

Of knowing people who went messing with things that they ought not have messed with, and they end up missing for months, years, only to come back—different, a shell of who they were or perhaps even replaced by something…else.

Lupin made the mistake of sleeping in her car on the side of the road, once, when she had left home for weeks on end to get away from home. She was only sixteen at the time. She'd been driving all night and all day, and wanted a quick cat nap to recharge her batteries. Sure, she had some money, enough for a motel room—but she had quit that place the moment she felt the ice in the air, saw her breath fogging, and caught a glimpse of a noose and a body dangling from it from the corner of her eye.

The sight had gone as soon as she turned to look, but it didn't settle right with her. Her gut told her to run.

But that wasn't what bothered her when she slowed to a crawl on the side of the road, no traffic behind her and none heading her way, the cornfields a quiet forest of emerald-turning-purple-grey and fuzzy in the oncoming twilight. She sat there in the idling vehicle for some time, concerned at the twist in her gut, of the tension in her spine and shoulders, feeling as though something was watching her. She made the mistake of looking around, instead of simply toughing out the next stretch to the next town, and spotted the red eyes in fields across from her, watching.

Just watching.

She forgot how to breathe for what seemed an eternity, before she managed to draw one in, painful as it was. Her stomach twisted into yet another series of knots and simply dropped away, afraid to look away, terrified that if she did, it'd sidle right up next to her car door—whatever it was. There was no light to make them. No body attached that she could make out, except the vaguest humanoid shadowy shape, but it didn't feel corporeal. Something told her, deep down and heavy, to get while the going was good before whatever the damn thing was got bored and decided to make her disappear.

Seeing those eyes, red and glowing, merely an inch or so apart from one another, seemed to be conveying a message with just a look alone: she didn't belong there and she had better get moving or else.

She reached, slow and steady, for the clutch and jerked it into first gear, never letting her gaze tear from the sight of the eyes, like the dying light of a fire and slowly rolled away. An instinct came over her, and she reached into the passenger seat, making sure her backpack was still there. Something told her she couldn't afford to let it leave that spot as she finally turned to look ahead and stare at the road.

She didn't dare look in the rearview mirror and kept on going, as the last of the sun's rays disappeared over the horizon, casting the world into a slant of darkness.


	5. Memories

**Memories**

The question itself had been innocuous enough; prompted by a series of stories traded between the resident monster hunters. Hellboy relayed their most recent—and last—assignment with the BPRD to an enraptured audience consisting of the Elrics, the Winchesters, Winry, and the gargoyle clan.

…well, "enraptured" was probably too strong a word. There was varying degrees of interest and belief of the events as Hellboy continued his story—which was reaching a climax as the former BPRD agents battled the Golden Army that Prince Nuada had awakened. Some were in awe. Others were impressed. The rest were listening with mild amusement. Lupin was one of those, a book in one hand, a beer bottle not far from the other.

She nodded off a bit from the story and paid more attention to her book—a man who was left behind, believed to be dead, on the planet Mars and must now work against all odds to survive—when a sharp whistle drew her attention from the words on the page. She blinked several times, returning her attention back to the story at hand…only to find eyes on her, waiting and contemplatively expectant of her.

"You in there or should we try again later?" Dean remarked with a bit of a smirk.

Lupin rolled her eyes, snapping her book shut, with one finger wedged in place to mark her progress.

"What?"

"How'd you earn the nickname, 'The Reaper'?"

There was a flurry of murmurs in agreement at the question, some echoing the sentiment.

"It's a nickname. Not much behind it," Lupin stated, already losing interest and opened her book back up, scanning the page to see where she was.

"No, no, no, no—come on. There's got to be a pretty good story behind it, right? At least an interesting reason, at best. I don't exactly know a lot of people who go around calling themselves 'The Reaper' without reason. Unless they're an actual Reaper, or you know, the Grim Reaper."

The werewolf eyes skimmed over the top of her book, noticing that she'd accrued a larger audience in the interim of just a minute or two.

Even Valka was there, curiously staring at the werewolf. Lupin rolled her bichromatic eyes.

"It's simple," Lupin said, flicking her gaze back to her page, reading through it, and thumbed it over to the next. "Every time I went out behind the wire, I racked up a kill count."

"_Every_ time?" Sam queried, his tone alluding his disbelief at the statement. Lupin met his gaze head-on, steely and unblinking.

"Every. Single. Time." She said, enunciating every word with care, so she wouldn't be misunderstood or misheard. Lupin paused to take a long draft from her beer, draining the bottle entirely, even as her eyes drifted to the words in the book. She put the empty bottle down and not even a second later, the clink of another bottle snapped against the table beside her old bottle. It was even beaded with condensation, crisp and cold and straight from the cooler. Dean was already retreating back to his seat, olive green flecked with hazel meeting her stormy blue-grey and amber-gold straight on.

Slowly, she dog-eared her place, and set her paperback onto the table, and took the fresh bottle, popping the metal top off with her thumb and took a swig.

"Every time I went out behind the wire, I got a kill. I have sharper hearing and vision than everyone in my unit combined. We were in an active warzone, so it was inevitable that kill counts started rising whenever someone went out, but there ain't a single person on our base that's gotten a kill every time they went out. It was like I was a trouble magnet, and every time I went out, trouble would start honing in on me."

With a listless shrug, she paused to swig another mouthful of beer down her throat.

"There's not much else to say. The guys in my unit started calling me their 'Angel of Death', because chances of getting killed with me around were low, and chances of the enemy getting shot down were pretty damned high. Then they switched it up by calling me 'The Reaper', because I never missed a target."

"Come on, don't lie. You can tell us the truth, we've all fucked up once or twice," Hellboy chuckled with a broad grin painted across his face. Lupin met his gaze steadily, unflinching.

"I. Never. Missed."

"She's telling the truth," Abe concurred with a nod. There were a few double-takes from several of the gathered faces, as though to ensure that they'd heard both Lupin and Abe right, before her audience returned their attention to her.

"Why weren't you a sniper? Sounds like you had the skillset to become one," Kennox piped up, genuine curiousity colouring his tone. Dorian gave a concurrent nod of the head.

"If your vision and hearing was better than your human counterparts, you definitely could've been a better asset from higher vantage points than in a truck."

Lupin held up a hand. "Two reasons. The first, they don't have any female Marine snipers and it doesn't look like that policy is changing anytime soon, as far as I'm aware. You wouldn't believe how many times my higher ups, after I scored perfectly after every rifle range, were trying to push for me to go for sniper training, to make higher headquarters to make an exception, to have me meet the qualifications that would have possibly gotten me in—even though there was plenty blocking me even if I was interested, there would have been a ton of red tape keeping my ass out, namely the biggest being, it's a boys club and girls aren't allowed."

There was a round of sheepish and disbelieving looks, and a grumble from Edward to Alphonse of, "How can they just ban women from being snipers?"

It was an interesting comment that she wanted to ask more about, at a later date, but Dorian pressed on with, "And the other reason?"

"The other reason's simple," Lupin sighed. "I like working on my trucks more than I like shooting a rifle. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind sitting downrange during qual week, popping off rounds. It's a nice stress reliever. I just don't much care for the actual application of killing people with it. I'd rather get my hands dirty with oil and lubricant than with blood and carbon. Just cause I'm good at using a rifle, don't mean I much like it."

"Could have fooled me," Dean remarked offhandedly. "The way you took down those _anthropophagi_, it was like you were just taking out some wild west baddie without breaking a sweat."

"We missed all the fun, didn't we, Blue?" Hellboy sighed, and Abe tilted his head a bit to the side.

"Not that much of a loss, in my opinion," Abe replied.

Lupin stared them down for a moment longer, before picking her book back up and resumed her reading.

"Look, I'm sorry my answer is so blaise and unsatisfactory. I didn't much care for the nickname, and I'd rather just leave it behind, if it's all the same to you."

"There was something else Thrax had mentioned," Sam pressed, although he wasn't so much as addressing Lupin as he was the rest of the group.

"Well, what'd he say?" Brooklyn inquired, looking between the Winchesters and Lupin.

"He said that it was a shame they'd lost her and that they would've lived longer if she'd stuck around."

"I'm right here, you know," Lupin called, not bothering to hide her aggravated tone. She glared at them all from the corner of her eye, annoyed that they were carrying on as though she'd left or wasn't there at all.

"What do you think he meant, then?"

All at once, Lupin's smartass comments were all washed away in the wake of that question. It wasn't something she liked dwelling on, because the less she thought about its meaning, the better. She could only imagine what Thrax had meant by that. Every time she'd tried to find the answers, she found her online connection severed, or the website carrying such news or even allusions to events overseas blocked entirely.

Chimera Dynamics was monitoring their activities very carefully and had algorithms in place to black out undesirable search histories or snooping.

She had no idea where her unit was, or what was going on, but the comment was either a kernel of truth, meant to torment her, or it was a lie meant to throw her off her game. To make her worry, to wonder, to go mad with not knowing, of not being able to find out. When she had pressed Scribe and Scribble for more details, they grew unusually silent and evasive on the matter, and refused to answer her questions, citing that they'd find out, and then they never do.

She shook her head.

"No idea. I'm still waiting on the answer to that, but I have a feeling I'm not going to get them anytime soon."

_I just hope that they're still alive over there. _

When the assembled group suspected that they weren't going to get anything more out of her, they turned over to new stories and topics. Valka was the only one who came to her side and sat beside the werewolf, quiet and meditative. For a time, they sat side by side, not saying anything to one another. Lupin read, although she barely absorbed the words printed before her, and after a while, gave up, and set herself to simply drink and sit.

As the crowd began to ebb as the late-night hours chipped away, Valka broke the silence at last.

"I hope that your friends are all right, and that Thrax was only saying those things to rile you up."

Lupin exhaled, soft and slow and long, through her nose. "Yeah, well…here's to hoping they're all right."

With that said, she raised her bottle in quiet salute and downed the last swallow of beer.


End file.
